Human Rights Watch as a Political Instrument
of the Liberal Cosmopollitan Elite of the United States of
America - Oleg Popov, 16 November
2004 "...Jimmy Carter’s “liberal” Administration in
the person of his national security advisor Zbigniev
Brzezinski considered propaganda of the ideas of “freedom of
speech, human rights and democracy” in common context of
geopolitical opposition and ideological struggle between the
USA and the USSR. Accordingly, the “workers of ideological
front” (Freedom House, Rand Corp., Council for Foreign
Relations, US Institute for Peace, Voice of America, Radio
Liberty and other governmental organizations and research
centers) propagandized the ideas of human rights striving
for creation of favorable “subjective” conditions of
political and ideological changes in Eastern European
countries in the direction needed by the US.

Western human rights activists-liberals (many of them had
shared anti-capitalist and even socialist views) regarded
the “introduction” of universal ideas of human rights in the
USSR as a necessary element of the struggle for “liberation
of the whole mankind” a kind of missionary activities. For
the same reason they wanted to defend human rights in any
country of the world, no matter what kind of political and
block orientation it was possessed. In other words, American
human rights activists didn’t appear only as US citizens
troubling about American interests but as defenders of human
rights worldwide. This wing of realists-liberals is often
called by American public a “liberal cosmopolitan” wing...

The financing of all the branches of HRW was
generally provided by Jewish charity funds such as Aaron
Diamond Foundation, Jacob M. Kaplan Fund, Revson Foundation
and Scherman Foundation. As in 70s, the Ford Foundation
continued financing HRW too. Among new “donors” there
appeared well-known multimillion philanthropic funds such as
MacArthur Foundation, John Merck Fund and J. Mertz-Gilmore
Foundation. Financing had also been provided by the Fund for
Free Expression, established by Robert L. Bernstein at the
beginning of 70s. At the same time the list of its activists
included the names of well-known writers, scientists,
artists (Arthur Miller, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike etc.) and
managers of large charity funds (already mentioned Dorothy
Cullman, Irene Diamond and Mark Kaplan).

And the step, which decided the fate of
HRW and influenced not only the character of its activities
and the choice of objects to criticize but the very mission
of the organization was its “alliance” with
stockjobber-billionaire George Soros. Soros joined HRW
not only himself. His wife Susan, the shareholders of his
Quantum Fund multimillionaires John Gutfreund and John
Studzinski, Fiona, the wife of the manager of his fund
billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, even the employees of
companies and funds managed by Soros, well-known
politologists Barnett Rubin and William D. Zabel, and also
Warren Zimmerman, a diplomat became members of the Advisory
Committee of HRW and its branches..."
more

"...For a century there has been
a strong interventionist belief in the United States - although
it competes with widespread isolationism. In recent years
attitudes hardened: human-rights interventionism became a
consensus among the 'foreign policy elite' even before
September 11. Human Rights Watch itself is part of that elite,
which includes government departments, foundations, NGO's and
academics. It is certainly not an association of 'concerned
private citizens'. HRW board members include present and past
government employees, and overlapping directorates link it to
the major foreign policy lobbies in the US... Human rights
are not the only ideology of intervention. The
'civilising mission', which justified 19th century colonisation,
is another example.The point is that human rights can serve a
geopolitical purpose, which is unrelated to their moral
content...."

Under President Clinton, Human Rights Watch was
the most influential pro-intervention lobby: its 'anti-atrocity
crusade' helped drive the wars in ex-Yugoslavia. Under Bush it
lost influence to the neoconservatives, who have their own
crusades, and it is unlikely to regain that influence in his
second term. But the 'two interventionisms' are not so different
anyway: Human Rights Watch is founded on belief in the
superiority of American values. It has close links to the US
foreign policy elite, and to other interventionist and
expansionist lobbies.

No US citizen, and no US organisation, has any right
to impose US values on Europe. No concentration camps or mass graves
can justify that imposition. But Human Rights Watch finds it
self-evident, that the United States may legitimately restructure
any society, where a mass grave is found. That is a dangerous belief
for a superpower: European colonialism shows how easily a
'civilising mission' produces its own atrocities. The Belgian
'civilising mission' in the Congo, at the time promoted as a noble
and unselfish enterprise, killed half the population. Sooner or
later, more people will die in crusades to prevent a new Holocaust,
than died in the Holocaust itself. And American soldiers will
continue to kill, torture and rape, in order to prevent killings,
torture and rape.

For a century there has been a strong interventionist belief in
the United States - although it competes with widespread
isolationism. In recent years attitudes hardened: human-rights
interventionism became a consensus among the 'foreign policy elite'
even before September 11. Human Rights Watch itself is part of that
elite, which includes government departments, foundations, NGO's and
academics. It is certainly not an association of 'concerned private
citizens'. HRW board members include present and past government
employees, and overlapping directorates link it to the major foreign
policy lobbies in the US. Cynically summarised, Human Rights Watch
arose as a joint venture of George Soros and the State Department.
Nevertheless, it represents some fundamental characteristics of
US-American culture.

The September 11 attacks confirmed the interventionism of the
entire foreign policy elite - not just the highly visible
neoconservatives. More important, the public response illustrated
the almost absolute identification of Americans with their own value
system. Without any apparent embarrassment, President Bush declared
that a war between good and evil was in progress. Ironically, that
mirrors the language of the Islamic fundamentalists. It implies a
Crusader mentality, rather than the usual pseudo-neutrality of
liberal-democratic political philosophy. A society which believes in
its own absolute goodness, and the absolute and universal nature of
its own values, is a fertile ground for interventionism.

Human rights are part of the American value system, but they are
also especially useful as an 'ideology of justification' in wartime.
Such an ideology should ideally meet some criteria. First, it should
not be a simple appeal to self-interest. Simply stating "We own the
world!" or "We are the master race, submit to us!" is not good
propaganda. As a slogan, 'war on terrorism' is also inadequate,
since it is too clearly an American war, against the enemies
of America. For propaganda purposes, an appeal to higher values is
preferable.

Second, these higher values should be universal. This is why
Islamism would probably fail as an interventionist ideology: it is
specific to Islam. A geopolitical claim to intervene in support of
Islamic values can be answered simply by saying: "We are not Muslims
here". The doctrine of universal human rights is, by definition,
universal and cross-cultural.

Third, the ideology should appeal to the population of the
super-power. In the United States, for historical reasons, 'rights
doctrines' have become part of its political culture. It would be
pointless for a US President to justify a war by appealing to Islam,
or royal legitimacy, because very few Americans hold these beliefs.
Most Americans do believe in rights theories - and very few know
that these theories are disputed.

Fourth, if possible, the ideology should appeal to the 'enemy'
population. It should ideally be part of their values. That is
difficult, but the doctrine of human rights has succeeded in
acquiring cross-cultural legitimacy. This does not mean it is
inherently right - but simply that no non-western cultures have an
answer to the doctrine. The government of China, for instance, fully
accepts the concept of human rights, and claims to uphold them. So
when it is accused of human rights violations, it can do nothing but
deny, on this issue it is perpetually on the defensive. Acceptance
of your values by the enemy population could be seen as the Holy
Grail of war propaganda: if the enemy leadership is incapable of
presenting an alternative value system, it will ultimately collapse.

Human rights are not the only ideology of intervention.
The
'civilising mission', which justified 19th century colonisation, is
another example.The point is that human rights can serve a
geopolitical purpose, which is unrelated to their moral content. It
is not possible to show that 'human rights' exist, and most moral
philosophers would not even try. It might not be a very important
issue in ethics anyway - but it is important in politics and
geopolitics. And geopolitics is what Human Rights Watch is about -
not about ethics. HRW itself is an almost exclusively US-American
organisation. Its version of human rights is the Anglo-American
tradition. It is 'mono-ethical' - recognising no legitimate ethical
values outside its own. However, the human-rights tradition is not,
and can never be, a substitute for a general morality. Major ethical
issues such as equality, distributive justice, and innovation,
simply don't fit into rights-based ethics.

Ethical values are not, in themselves, culturally specific.
However, this ethical tradition has become associated with the
United States. It is dominant in the political culture, it has
become associated with the flag and other national symbols, and it
is capable of generating intense national emotion. It emphasises the
universal rights set out in the American Declaration of Independence
and its Constitution. In a sense the US was 'pre-programmed' as an
interventionist power. Universal human rights, by their nature, tend
to justify military intervention to enforce those rights.
Expansionists, rather than isolationists, are closest to the spirit
of the American Constitution, with its inherently interventionist
values. In fact, most US-Americans believe in the universality and
superiority of their ethical tradition. Interventionist human-rights
organisations are, like the neoconservative warmongers, a logical
result. Human Rights Watch is not formally an 'association for the
promotion of the American Way of Life' - but it tends to behave like
one.

Human Rights Watch operates a number of discriminatory
exclusions, to maintain its American character, and that in turn
reduces internal criticism of its limited perspective. Although it
publishes material in foreign languages to promote its views, the
organisation itself is English-only. More seriously, HRW
discriminates on grounds of nationality. Non-Americans are
systematically excluded at board level - unless they have emigrated
to the United States. HRW also recruits its employees in the United
States, in English. The backgrounds of the Committee members (below)
indicate that HRW recruits it decision-makers from the upper class,
and upper-middle class. Look at their professions: there are none
from middle-income occupations, let alone any poor illegal
immigrants, or Somali peasants.

Human Rights Watch can therefore claim no ethical superiority. It
is itself involved in practices it condemns elsewhere, such as
discrimination in employment, and exclusion from social structures.
It can also claim no neutrality. An organisation which will not
allow a Serb or Somali to be a board member, can give no neutral
assessment of a Serbian or Somali state. It would probably be
impossible for this all-American, English-only, elite organisation,
to be anything else but paternalistic and arrogant. To the people
who run HRW, the non-western world consists of a list of atrocities,
and via the media they communicate that attitude to the American
public. It can only dehumanise African, Asians, Arabs and eastern
Europeans. Combined with a tendency to see the rest of the world as
an enemy, that will contribute to new abuses and continuing civilian
deaths, during America's crusades.

Who runs the HRW Europe Committee?

Human Rights Watch is organised approximately by continent. The
Europe section was established in 1978, originally named 'Helsinki
Steering Committee' or 'Helsinki Watch'. It is the core of the later
Human Rights Watch organisation. In the late 1970's, human rights
had become the main issue in Cold War propaganda, after Soviet
concessions at the Helsinki summit (1975), allowing human rights
monitoring. Western governments encouraged 'private' organisations
to use this concession - not out of moral concern, but as a means of
pressuring the Soviet Union. HRW was one of these 'private'
organisations: in other words, it began as a Cold War propaganda
instrument.

The committee is now called the Europe and Central Asia
Advisory Committee. It is still affiliated with the
International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, which
co-ordinates the "Helsinki committees". The membership now includes
fewer ex-diplomats than in the 1990's, more academics, and a few HRW
donors. This web page and other similar publicity, has probably
influenced the change in style. (By appointing his tax lawyer to the
HRW Board, Soros exposed himself to ridicule and charges of
cronyism). The list below is the March 2004 version.

Peter Osnos, chair

George Soros' publisher. He is Chief Executive of Public Affairs
publishers.

Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University,
advised the State Department on Turkish and Kurdish issues.
Married to Ellen Laipson, former Special Assistant to Madeleine
Albright, when Albright was UN Ambassador. Considered
anti-Turkish by some Turkish media. See:
Columnist on US Plans for Cyprus, 1999.

A link to the foreign policy establishment, one of several at
HRW. Abramowitz was U.S. Ambassador to Turkey (1989-91) and
Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research
(1985-89), among other posts: see his personal details at the
Council on Foreign Relations,
where he is a Fellow. The
CFR is the heart of interventionist US
policy since 1921 (and hated by the isolationist right). He directed the CFR Balkan Economic Task Force, which
published a report on "Reconstructing the Balkans".

A donor of HRW, see the list below. A retired vice president
with the
Carnegie Corporation of New York, who donated $1
million to Stanford University.

Felice Gaer

Human rights specialist at the American Jewish Committee, and
Chairperson of the
U.S. Commission on International Religious
Freedom, which is primarily active against Islamic countries and
China. According to this
JTA report, Gaer praised Madeleine Albright for her
"outstanding human rights record", apparently meaning that she
would not allow any criticism of Israel's housing policy in
Jerusalem. Gaer was also chair of the Steering Committee for the
50th anniversary of the UN Human Rights Declaration, see this
biography:
"Ms.Gaer is Director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the
Advancement of Human Rights. Author, speaker, and activist, she
is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Board of
Directors of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, a member of the
International Human Rights Council at the Carter Center, ...Vice
President of the International League for Human Rights."

In 1999, Felice Gaer was a non-governmental member of the
United States delegation to a United Nations Human Rights
Commission meeting in Geneva, where (according to the Voice of
America) she denounced Sudan, saying the the U.S. "cannot accept
those who invoke Islam or other religions as justification for
atrocious human rights abuses." More interesting ( with
hindsight) is this
speech at the Geneva meeting, where she suggested the UN
should no longer investigate prison rapes in the US: "we would
urge the Special Rapporteurs to focus their attention on
countries where the situation is the most dire and the abuses
the most severe."

The disclosures about abuse of prisoners in Iraq illustrate
the ethical problem here. One thing you can't say, is that
'America doesn't treat its own prisoners like that'. Americans
do treat their fellow citizens like that - in American
jails, which have a consistently bad record on prisoner abuse.
But Felice Gaer suggested that it somehow isn't as bad, if the
US authorities do such things. The United States, she said, was
committed to human rights and... "When violations occur, we have
the mechanisms and protections in place to prosecute."

"...on the eve of her visit to Michigan, the Special
Rapporteur received a letter dated 12 June 1998 from the
Governor of Michigan informing her that she would not be allowed
to ... visit any of the women's prisons... The Special
Rapporteur found this refusal particularly disturbing since she
had received very serious allegations of sexual misconduct
occurring at Florence Crane Women's Facility and Camp Branch
Facility for Women in Coldwater, Michigan, as well as at Scott
Correctional Facility for Women in Plymouth, Michigan."

Virginia and California also obstructed the Special
Rapporteur. Felice Gaer knew that, because the report had
already been published. She was lying when she told the UN that
"we welcome outside investigations". Instead of condemning the
obstruction, she diverted attention to abuses in Nigeria,
Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and China. The United States, she
explained, is an open, democratic society.

That sounds like Donald Rumsfeld speaking about Abu Ghraib.
It is dangerous attitude: it implies that America can ultimately
do no wrong, since its open society is a perfect defence against
abuse of power. Human Rights Watch does promote that attitude -
that 'human rights abuse' is essentially something done by
foreigners, and that American institutions are somehow immunised
against it. Now, the US soldiers who abused and killed prisoners
in Iraq and Afghanistan don't see themselves as comparable to
the previous regimes: they see themselves as the good guys,
defenders of a system which is infinitely better. Certainly
under wartime conditions, that attitude inevitably leads to
abuses.

So Human Rights Watch itself must accept some of the blame,
for what happened to the prisoners. HRW divides humanity in two:
on the one side are the supporters of American values. On the
other, worthless criminal barbarian rapists and torturers. In
this logic 'human rights' does not imply that Iraqi prisoners
should be treated with respect, but rather the opposite. From
"our torture is different" it's a small step to "our torture is
acceptable because it is anti-torturer" and then another small
step to "human rights means torturing torturers". Or their
friends, or their family, or the subversives who want to appease
them...

Michael Erwin Gellert

Vice Chairman of the Board at Fanton's New School for Social
Research. Partner in the private investment company Windcrest
Partners, and Chairman of the Board of the Carnegie Institute.
Gellert is or was a director of
Premier Parks Inc.,
owner of the Six Flags and Walibi theme park chains.

Paul Goble

Director of Communications and political commentator at
Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Cold War propaganda transmitters
that survived the end of the Cold War. From their website: "Free
Europe, Inc., was established in 1949 as non-profit, private
corporations to broadcast news and current affairs programs to
Eastern European countries behind the Iron Curtain. The Radio
Liberty Committee, Inc., was created two years later along the
same lines to broadcast to the nations inside the Soviet Union.
Both were funded principally by the U.S. Congress, through the
Central Intelligence Agency, but they also received some private
donations as well. The two corporations were merged into a
single RFE/RL, Inc. in 1975."

It is still funded by the US Government, through
Congressional appropriation.

Bill Green, ex-member

Former Republican member of Congress, a trustee of the New
School for Social Research (where Fanton is President), with
many other public and business posts: see the
biography at the American Assembly, an academic/political
think-tank.

Stanley Hoffman

A pro-interventionist theorist (of course that means US
intervention, not a Taliban invasion of the US). Professor at
Harvard, see his
biography. Note that his colleagues include Daniel
Goldhagen, who openly advocated occupation of Serbia, to impose
a US-style democracy: see
A New Serbia.

Jeri Laber

Longtime HRW staff member, since the Helsinki Watch period. Now
an advisor, without executive tasks,

Kati Marton, ex-member

President of the Committee to Protect Journalists. However this
'protection' did not extend to journalists killed by NATO
bombing of the Belgrade TV studios: she declined to condemn it.
This may, perhaps, have something to do with not embarrassing
her husband: Richard C. Holbrooke, former Special Envoy to
Yugoslavia, and US Ambassador to the United Nations. For an idea
of the social world behind Human Rights Watch, and a glimpse of
of how US foreign policy is made, see this article about their
cocktail parties...

Dick Holbrooke, who's been U.N. ambassador since August,
has a different idea of what sort of people the suite should be
filled with. Tonight, he's hosting a dinner for General Wesley
Clark, the granite-faced, soft-spoken nato chief, who is leaving
his post in April. .... Dressed in a formal pin-striped suit,
crisp white shirt, and red tie, Holbrooke still manages to look
comfortably rumpled -- his unruly hair is the secret to this
effect -- as he banters his way around the room. Introducing
Clark to billionaire financier George Soros and Canadian press
lord Conrad Black, Holbrooke teasingly calls the general, whose
formal title is supreme Allied commander for Europe, "The
Supreme,"...
Holbrooke's wife, the author Kati Marton, is equally adept at
the art of the cocktail party. Dressed in an elegant white
pantsuit, she ushers guests into the dining room, where four
tables are set for a meal of crab cakes and sautéed duck. Marton
and Holbrooke, who have been giving twice-a-week diplomatic
dinners, have a carefully choreographed act. "I give the opening
toast, which is unorthodox in the U.N. village," she explains.
"Richard and I are making the point we're doing this together."
Ambassador A-List, from the January 3, 2000 issue of New
York Magazine.

As 'journalist protector', Kati Marton lobbied for the
Soros-funded B92 radio in Belgrade, which played a central role
in the opposition under Milosevic, at least until his last year
in power. The campaign for B92 is illustrative of the symbiotic
relationship of interventionist lobbies and interventionist
governments. Marton was lobbying to protect an 'independent'
radio station which was already part-funded by the US government
(National Endowment for Democracy). Partly as a result, it got
even more western funding.

Immediately after the station was banned, Ivor Roberts,
the British ambassador, showed his support by visiting its
offices on the fifth floor of a run-down socialist-style
building in downtown Belgrade. Carl Bildt, then the
international High Representative in charge of the civilian side
of the Dayton peace agreement in Bosnia, the US State
Department, and Kati Marton of the Committee to Protect
Journalists also made protests on behalf of the station.

Internet technology and international pressure proved to
be effective weapons against Milosevic. After two days he
withdrew his edict forbidding B-92 to broadcast. It seems likely
that he was convinced that lifting the ban would win Western
praise and deflect international attention from his electoral
fraud. Immediately afterward, B-92 was able - through funds
provided equally by the BBC, the British Foreign Office, USAID,
the European Union, and George Soros's Open Society
Foundation-to gain access to a satellite that linked
twenty-eight independent local radio stations, covering 70
percent of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which is now made
up of Serbia and Montenegro.
1997 article from the New York Review of Books

Prema Mathai-Davis, ex-member

A token non-westerner, an Indian immigrant. She was, however,
also CEO of the YWCA (Young Womens Christian Association), which
is as American as can be.

Jack Matlock, ex-member

US Ambassador to the Soviet Union during its collapse,
1987-1991. Author of Autopsy On An Empire: The American
Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union
(Random House, 1995).

Member of the large
Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council. The Atlantic
Council is more than a pro-NATO fan club: it supports an
expansionist US foreign policy in general. Note their recent
paper (in pdf format)
Beyond Kosovo, a redesign of the Balkans within the
framework of the proposed Stability Pact.

The Atlantic Council is a delight for corporate-conspiracy
theorists. Yes, it is all paid for by the Rockefeller
foundation, the Soros foundation, the Nuclear Energy Institute,
Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop, Exxon, British Nuclear Fuels, the US
Army and the European Union. And, no surprise to conspiracy
fans, Matlock attended the
1996
Bilderberg Conference.

Walter Link

Chairman of the Global Academy Institute for Globalization,
Human Rights, and Leadership - obviously not a man to limit the
scope of his activities. Promoter of the Blue Planet Run, a
global foot-race starting in San Francisco, which will improve
the global water supply. That's what it says at the website
anyway. The Academy is associated with the futurist John
Naisbitt.

Michael McFaul

Hoover Institution Fellow at Stanford University. See his
biography. A lobbyist for the 'democratisation' of Russia,
and relatively hostile to the Putin government. Note, that there
is no lobby in Russia, that seeks to decide the form of
government of the United States.

Editor of World Policy Journal, published by the World Policy
Institute. The WPI supports an expansionist and interventionist
American foreign policy: it is part of Jonathan Fanton's
New School University.

Joel Motley

Also on the main HRW Board. Managing Director, Carmona Motley,
Inc. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he was a
member of their Task Force on
Non-Lethal Technologies. This is what Mr. Motley wants to do
the poor, to improve their human rights:

- jamming or
destruction of communications, together with the ability to
transmit television and radio programs of ones choice,
potentially useful for reducing inflammatory, sometimes
genocidal, messages or separating murderous rulers from army and
populace;
- slickums and stickums to impede vehicle or foot traffic;
- highly obnoxious sounds and smells, capable of inducing
immediate flight or temporary digestive distress.

That would have helped in Somalia, concludes the CFR Task
Force. Needless to say there was no Somali on the Task Force
either. Motley is also on the Advisory Board of
LEAP, an educational charity,
where they develop courses in, among other things, conflict
resolution. Their website doesn't say whether the children are
trained to use digestive distress agents.

Herbert Okun

Career diplomat, former Special Advisor on Yugoslavia to
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Deputy Co-Chairman of the
International Conference on the former Yugoslavia. Member of the
Board of the Lawyers Alliance for World Security (LAWS) and its
affiliate the Committee for National Security (CNS) which gives
this biography:

Ambassador Herbert Okun is the U.S. member and
Vice-President of the International Narcotics Control Board, and
Visiting Lecturer on International Law at Yale Law School.
Previously, he was the Deputy Chairman on the U.S. delegation at
the SALT II negotiations and led the U.S. delegation in the
trilateral U.S.-U.K.-USSR Talks on the CTBT. From 1991 to 1993
Ambassador Okun was Special Advisor on Yugoslavia to Secretary
of State Cyrus Vance, Personal Envoy of the U.N. Secretary
General, and Deputy Co-Chairman of the International Conference
on the former Yugoslavia. He also served as Deputy Permanent
Representative of the United States to the UN from 1985 to 1989
serving on the General Assembly, the Disarmament Committee and
the Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Amb. Okun was
also U.S. Ambassador to the former German Democratic Republic.

He was from 1990-97 Executive Director of the Financial
Services Volunteer Corps, "a non-profit organization providing
voluntary assistance to help establish free-market financial
systems in former communist countries", see his biography at
International Security Studies at Yale University, where he is
also a board member. This Corps is a de facto agency of USAID,
see how it is listed country-by-country in their
report. Although it is not relevant to Human Rights Watch,
this
curriculum vitae gives a good impression of the kind of
international elite created by such programs.

Okun is also a member emeritus of the board of the
European
Institute in Washington, an Atlanticist lobby. It organises
the European-American Policy Forum, the European-American
Congressional Forum, and the Transatlantic Joint Security
Policies Project. Okun is a special advisor to the
Carnegie Commission on
Preventing Deadly Conflict funded by the Carnegie
Corporation. (It links pro-western international elite figures
advocating a formal structure for control of states by the
"international community").

Okun was a member of a Task Force (including Bianca Jagger
and George Soros) on war criminals: see their
report . Although it also demands "UN Sanctions Against
States Harboring Indicted War Criminals" it is unlikely that the
Task Force members meant the man quoted at the start of their
report, President Clinton.

Represents HRW Southern California on the main HRW Board, see
her
biography. One of the few who are simply human rights
activists, although her views are clearly 100% acceptable to the
US Government. She was appointed a member of the U.S. delegation
to the 1991 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe
(CSCE) in Moscow. The biography notes that she "...participated
in many investigation delegations to the former USSR,
Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, Cuba, Vietnam and Cambodia". There is
even a photo gallery: Jane with helmet in front of an armoured
car in Bosnia, Jane at Tianmen Square, Jane in Red Square, Jane
celebrates Ukrainian independence, Jane in Cambodia with Queen
Noor of Jordan.

Again note, that US citizens consider it normal to travel to
Europe, to decide on Europe's 'Security and Cooperation'.
However, there is absolutely no equivalent "Conference on North
American Security and Cooperation", where Europeans arrive, to
tell Americans what to do. And no Bosnians are allowed to drive
armoured vehicles around the United States.

Hannah Pakula

Author, member of the Freedom to Write Committee at PEN, the
international writers organisation. Widow of film director Alan
Pakula. Co-organiser of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

"Collectively and individually, BJ members love and
support the State of Israel. The continuing violence in Israel
deepens our commitment as it saddens our hearts. We pray
together for peace. At the same time, we assume our obligation
as sacred communities to take action that will both encourage
ongoing dialogue about the situation and explore the myriad ways
that we - collectively and individually - can support Israel
fulfill the vision put forth in its Declaration of
Independence."

Peratis ... is listed in
the 1995 donor's list.

Barnett Rubin

Academic and Soros-institutes advisor. Director of the "Center
for Preventive Action" at the Council on Foreign Relations.The
center is funded by the US Government through USIP, and by the
Carnegie Corporation as part of their program Preventing
Deadly Conflict. "Preventive Action" means intervention.

He is a member of the centers South Balkans Working Group,
and edited a 1996 Council on Foreign Relations study Towards
Comprehensive Peace in Southeast Europe: Conflict Prevention in
the South Balkans. Rubin is an Afghanistan specialist, also
on the Board of the Asia division of HRW. He authored and edited
several works on Afghanistan. Rubin apparently had a curious
attitude to the Taliban, he saw them as a bulwark against
Islamic radicalism. No doubt he changed his attitude after 11
September 2001. See this
letter to NPR, entitled Afghanistan Whitewash:

While the Lyden-Rubin conversation made no mention of US
support for the Taliban, they referred several times to US
"pressure" on the Taliban to now respect human rights. This is a
total white wash which distorts the historical record beyond
recognition.

Rubin is on the Advisory Board of the Soros Foundation
Central Eurasia Project. He is an advisor of the Forced
Migration Project of Soros' Open Society Institute, and he is
also on the Board of the Soros Humanitarian Fund for Tajikistan.
Perhaps most interesting is that the U.S. Institute of Peace (a
de facto government agency) gave him a grant to research
"formation of a new state system in Central Eurasia".
Barnett Rubin articles on Central Asia

This may be repetitive, but note once again that there are
absolutely no Foundations or Institutes in Central Asia, which
pay people to design "new state systems" in North America. For
people like Rubin "human rights" mean simply that the US designs
the world. See this article at the Soros Central Asia site, The
Political Economy of War and Peace in Afghanistan, advocating a
de facto colonial government in Afghanistan financed by oil
revenues. He wasn't talking about the present Karzai government,
which meets the description, but about the Taliban regime.
Although they might prefer to forget this now, western foreign
policy circles did consider recognising the Taliban, in a sort
of oil-for-sharia swop.

Rubin is also a member of the US State Department
Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad. The Final
Report of this Committee also sums up what the United States can
do, when it finds religious freedom has been infringed. The list
begins at "friendly, persuasive: open an embassy" and ends with
"act of war".

Rubin was also involved in the 1997 New York meeting, where
the United States attempted to create a unified Yugoslav
opposition, with among others Vuk Draskovic. The effort failed
at the time: the opposition never united until Milosevic fell.

Colette Shulman

Womens' rights specialist. Works for the US 'National Council
for Research on Women', where she is editor of 'Women's
Dialogue', a Russian-language magazine for Russian women. Does
the Russian Federation have a national research council which
publishes English-language magazines for American women? I doubt
it: it is the American obsession to redesign the rest of the
world, in detail.

Leon Sigal, also known as Lee Sigal

Director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at
the Social Science Research Council, specialist on North Korea,
author of 'Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North
Korea'. It is not clear why he is on the Europe Advisory
Committee, instead of the Asia committee. See his
biography:

...member of the editorial board of The New York Times
from 1989 until 1995. In 1979 he served as International Affairs
Fellow in the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs at the
Department of State and in 1980 as Special Assistant to the
Director. He was a Rockefeller Younger Scholar in Foreign Policy
Studies at the Brookings Institution from 1972-1974 and a guest
scholar there in 1981-1984. From 1974 to 1989 he taught
international politics at Wesleyan University as a professor of
government. He was an adjunct professor at Columbia University's
School of International and Public Affairs from 1985 to 1989 and
from 1996 to 2000, and visiting lecturer at Princeton
University's Woodrow Wilson School in 1988 and 2000.

In some ways the 'Osama bin Laden' of the human rights movement
- a rich man using his wealth, to spread his values across the
world. See this overview of his role in Eastern Europe:
George Soros: New Statesman Profile (Neil Clark, June 2003).
The Public Affairs site gives this short
biography of George Soros, chief financier of HRW and of
numerous organisations in eastern Europe with pro-American,
pro-market policies.

George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1930. In
1947 he emigrated to England, where he graduated from the London
School of Economics. While a student in London, Mr. Soros became
familiar with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, who had a
profound influence on his thinking and later on his
philanthropic activities. In 1956 he moved to the United States,
where he began to accumulate a large fortune through an
international investment fund he founded and managed.

Mr. Soros currently serves as chairman of Soros Fund Management
L.L.C., a private investment management firm that serves as
principal investment advisor to the Quantum Group of Funds. The
Quantum Fund N.V., the oldest and largest fund within the
Quantum Group, is generally recognized as having the best
performance record of any investment fund in the world in its
twenty-nine-year history.

Mr. Soros established his first foundation, the Open Society
Fund, in New York in 1979 and his first Eastern European
foundation in Hungary in 1984. He now funds a network of
foundations that operate in thirty-one countries throughout
Central and Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union, as well
as southern Africa, Haiti, Guatemala, Mongolia and the United
States. These foundations are dedicated to building and
maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of an open
society. Mr. Soros has also founded other major institutions,
such as the Central European University and the International
Science Foundation. In 1994, the foundations in the network
spent a total of approximately $300 million; in 1995, $350
million; in 1996, $362 million; and in 1997, $428 million.
Giving for 1998 is expected to be maintained at that level.

Founder and director of the
Third
Millennium Foundation. Although it sounds harmless, the
Foundation promotes a pseudo-ethical theory aimed at children,
in which morality is reduced to 'empathy'. It also funds some
human rights research.

Ruti Teitel

Professor of Constitutional Law at the New York Law School, see
his biography.
In the last few years he has specialised in the Constitutions of
eastern European countries, and advised on the new Ukrainian
constitution.

Mark von Hagen

Director of the
Harriman Institute - an International Relations institute of
Columbia University in New York. A Soviet and post-Soviet
specialist, with a long list of publications, see his
profile at the institute website.

Patricia M. Wald

US Judge, appointed to the Yugoslavia Tribunal (ICTY) in The
Hague, until 2001. See this
interview. Incidentally, the Soros Foundation also paid for
the equipment of the Tribunal - so much for its judicial
impartiality.

Mark Walton

This is apparently a British specialist in human rights and
mental health, but I can not link him definitively to HRW.

William D. Zabel

George Soros legal advisor, on foundation and charity law. A
estate and family financial lawyer for the rich at
Schulte, Roth, and
Zabel. His biography lists his involvement with these Soros
Foundations: "Newly Independent States and the Baltic Republics,
Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Central European University and
Open Society Fund". See this biographical article originally
from the National Law Journal:When fate
knocks, rich ring for Zabel

He is a trustee of Fanton's New School of Social Research,
and member of the Advisory Board of the World Policy Institute
at the New School.

Zabel is a director of the
Lawyers
Committee for Human Rights. The Lawyers Committee for Human
Rights is one of the partners in the "Apparel Industry
Partnership", a group set up by the Clinton administration and
the US clothing and footwear industries to defuse criticism of
conditions in their factories. The (not particularly radical) US
trade union federation refuses to co-operate with it.

Zabel is also on the
Board
of Doctors of the World, the USA branch of Médecins du Monde,
founded by Bernard Kouchner in 1980. Kouchner was later
appointed the UN Representative ( the "governor") in Kosovo -
and he has been suggested as a possible 'UN Governor' in Iraq.
Despite the name, Médecins du Monde is a purely western
organisation, see the
affiliate list.

Warren Zimmermann

US Ambassador to Yugoslavia during its break-up, author of
Origins of Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and Its Destroyers. A
Cold-War career diplomat, long active in US human rights
campaigns against eastern Europe. See this site for an
extreme pro-Bosniac assessment of his book by Branka Magas,
alleging he appeased Milosevic: "In the event, by pursuing
Yugoslavia's unity rather than supporting Slovenia and Croatia
in their demands for either the country's confederal
transformation or its peaceful dissolution, the United States
helped ensure its violent break-up". (I think it is logically
consistent with US values and interests, that the US supported
one policy around 1990 and another in Kosovo. The real problem
is that so many people in Europe expect the US to design their
states and write their Constitutions. It is because of this
attitude, that people like Zimmermann, and organisations like
HRW, can flourish) Zimmermann is now a professor of Diplomacy at
Columbia University. If you think the 'amoral diplomat' is a
stereotype, look at how his 1997
Contemporary Diplomacy course taught future diplomats:

Imagine that you are a member of Secretary Albright's
Policy Planning Staff. She has asked you to write a strategy
paper for one of the following diplomatic challenges:
- Dealing with NATO expansion and with the countries affected;
- Crafting a more energetic and assertive US approach to the
Israeli-PLO deadlock;
-Raising the American profile in sub-Saharan Africa;
- Developing a US initiative to improve relations with Cuba;
- Forging an American approach to Central Asia and its energy
wealth;
- Making better use of the UN and other multilateral
organizations like OSCE;
- Weighing the relative priorities between pursuing human rights
and keeping open lucrative economic opportunities;
- Increasing interest in, and support for, US foreign policy
among the American people.

With Barnett Rubin, Zimmermann is a member of the Advisory
Board of the Forced Migration Project at Soros Open Society
Institute.

With Felice Gaer, Zimmermann is also on the
Board
of the quasi-commercial International Dispute Resolution
Associates. (Peacemaking has become big business, but IDR is
also funded by the US Government through the USIP).

The Human Rights Watch 'Council' is primarily a fund-raising group.
However, its members no doubt expect some influence on HRW policy,
for their $5 000 minimum donation. The Council
describes
itself as "...an international membership organization that
seeks to increase awareness of human rights issues and support for
Human Rights Watch."

At first Council membership was secret, but the list is now
online: it partly overlaps with Board and Advisory Committee
members. The interesting thing about the Council is that it shows
how much HRW is not international. It is Anglo-American, to
the point of caricature. The Council is sub-divided onto four
'regional committees'. You might expect a division by continents
(the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia-Pacific). But instead the
'regions' of the HRW global community are New York, Northern
California, Southern California, and London. There is also a
three-person 'Europe Committee At-Large' but it does not appear to
organise any activities.

Although Human Rights Watch claims to act in the name of
universal values, it is an organisation with a narrow social and
geographical base. If HRW Council members were truly concerned about
the welfare of Africans, Tibetans or eastern Europeans, then they
would at least offer them an equal chance to influence the
organisation. Instead, geographical location and the high cost
restrict Council Membership to the US and British
upper-middle-class.

HRW Donors

Taken from an older version of the HRW website, this 1995 list is
apparently the only information available. In the United States, HRW
is not legally obliged to disclose who donates money. About half its
funds come from foundations, and half from individual donors, in
total about $20 million.

In its Annual Reports, HRW always claims that it "accepts no
government funds, directly or indirectly." However, that was a lie
according to the 1995 list, and it is still a lie. The Dutch Novib -
now part of the Oxfam group - is a government-funded aid
organisation, and in turn it funded the activities of Human Rights
Watch Africa in the Great Lakes region and Angola. Oxfam itself is
primarily funded by the British government and the European Union,
see their
annual report. It is also funded by the
United States Agency for
International Development, USAID. Oxfam in turn partly funds Novib,
so some of that money finds it way to HRW. Both Oxfam and Novib
funded the HRW report on the
Rwanda genocide. So, if it is as accurate as HRW's claim not to
accept any indirect government funding, look elsewhere for the
truth.